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If you’re a gearhead who just can’t get enough of car shows and custom mods, then there are a few things you should know. First off, not every modification is worth the money. In order for a vehicle to be a joy to ride, it has to be street legal. And with the wrong modifications, you could be in for serious fines, fees, and other penalties.
What Car Modifications Are Illegal
What car modifications are illegal depends on which state you’re driving the vehicle in. Every state has different rules and those rules can change even more from county to county. However, there are a handful of modifications that are commonly legislated off the streets in most states. Those commonly illegal car modifications are as follows:
Light Rig on the Roof
A light rig is a kit designed to add increased lighting to your vehicle. These rigs are great for trekking, mountaineering, and other off-road activities, but most states have made it illegal to turn them on while on public roads.
If you need extra lighting on a public roadway, you should instead turn on your high beams. Operating rooftop light rigs on roadways can create significant dangers for drivers in oncoming traffic, who may be blinded by the overwhelming light of your vehicle.
Radar Detectors, Radar, and Laser Jammers
Radar detectors are devices designed to inform drivers when their speed is being measured by radar guns, like those used by police officers. These are explicitly illegal in all vehicles driven in Virginia and Washington DC. In Illinois, New York, and New Jersey, they are only allowed to be installed in non-commercial vehicles for personal use.
Radar and laser jammers are devices designed to block signals emitted by the aforementioned radar guns used by police officers, making it impossible for them to register your vehicle’s speed in the first place. Jammers are illegal at the federal level due to restrictions placed on them by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations.
Loud Exhausts
Federal and state laws exist that require all vehicles sold in the United States to be equipped with adequate mufflers to reduce the noise produced by their exhaust systems. It is generally illegal to remove these or to replace them with “straight pipes” or other excessively loud exhausts.
However, many states allow you to modify your muffler so long as you do not tamper with its internal baffling. The specifics of how loud your aftermarket muffler can be vary from state to state. Here are a few examples:
- Texas has no law regulating exhaust volume.
- California sets the exhaust volume limit at 95 decibels (slightly louder than the standard motorcycle exhaust).
- Kansas sets the exhaust volume for car engines at 90 decibels when measured from a distance of 50 feet.
- Minnesota has a general law that states that all vehicles must be equipped with mufflers that are “in good working order.”
Neon Lights
Neon lights (especially blue or red lights) are illegal in many jurisdictions. This is particularly true when mounted on top or underneath of a vehicle or surrounding the windshield / dashboard. Not only can these lights be considered an impersonation of emergency services (when in the relevant colors), they can also distract yourself or other drivers.
States like Arizona are the exception rather than the rule. Arizona specifically allows only amber or white lights and only on the sides of the vehicle. Kansas’s laws (which outright ban all flashing lights) are much more common and Michigan’s (which make red and blue lights illegal on any non-emergency vehicle) can be considered the norm country-wide.
Exhaust Pipes Without Emissions Equipment
Emissions standards are becoming more and more common with each passing year. As of January 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other state and federal organizations have secured countless emissions regulations to force manufacturers to produce vehicles with smaller carbon footprints.
These regulations most commonly take the form of restrictions on just how much carbon can be emitted from the exhausts of gasoline and combustion engines. Removing the emissions control device from your vehicle could open you up to federal prosecution under the Clean Air Act.
Lifted Suspension
If you’ve ever seen a lifted truck, odds are you saw it before a police officer did. Many states have maximum lift restrictions that directly outlaw excessively tall vehicles from being driven on public roadways.
Connecticut is one such state. Drivers in Connecticut are allowed to modify their vehicle’s suspension lift, but only by a maximum distance of four inches. Georgia, on the other hand, is even more restrictive despite being generally more rural. There, you can only increase the ground clearance by two inches before opening yourself up to fines under state law.
Very Low Suspension
The opposite of those lifted trucks we commonly see in rural areas is the lowriders we see in big cities. Lowriders are vehicles that have had their ground clearance reduced to bring the chassis of the vehicle much closer to the ground. Of course, this opens the vehicle and its driver up to significant risk in certain situations. Just look up the TikTok videos of lowriders losing fenders to speed bumps, for example.
In Georgia, vehicles can only have their ground clearance lowered by a maximum of two inches.
In states like New Hampshire, the law is less strict: The vehicle’s ground clearance can be significantly reduced, but no part of the vehicle’s bodywork or chassis is allowed to be lowered below the lowest part of the wheels.
Colored LED Headlight Bulbs
Many of the same restrictions often apply to LED headlights as apply to LED neons, which we mentioned above. That means no excessively bright lights, no red or blue lights, and no distracting lights. However, some states add additional restrictions as well.
For example, Kentucky has become one of the most recent states (as of January 2022) to pass a law outright banning the use of colored LED bulbs in headlights. The stated reasoning for this new law was the fact that colored LED headlights can be distracting to other drivers and—if installed incorrectly—can be difficult to control the beam, which can lead to oncoming drivers being blinded by fancy disco headlights.
Brighter HID Headlights
HID stands for “High-Intensity Discharge” and is a type of light that gives off a much brighter, bluish-white light. If you’ve ever been driving at night and felt as though the Sun itself just drove past you in oncoming traffic, chances are you encountered a set of HID headlights.
Because of the sheer brightness of these lights, the possibility of being blinded by them while driving is exceptionally higher than other LED headlights. That’s why so many jurisdictions have moved to ban them. But not only that, HID headlights are federally illegal as well, since certain federal regulations require that replacement headlight bulbs must match the specifications of the original equipment.
Nitrous Oxide Systems (NOS)
If you’ve ever seen Fast and Furious, you know what nitrous oxide is. Nitrous oxide is a chemical accelerant, a.k.a. a speed booster for combustion engines. Nitrous oxide systems function by injecting the chemical into the fuel and igniting it in the engine to significantly increase the acceleration of the vehicle.
Due to the fact that these are most commonly used in street racing practices, many states have outlawed the installation of nitrous oxide systems in most vehicles.
For example, Ohio has some of the strictest laws in the country regarding NOS. When buying nitrous oxide in Ohio, you are legally required to sign a form declaring that you know it is illegal to use it in a vehicle. Sellers are also required to keep the names of the people who have bought the chemical for at least two years after the date of the sale.
Plate Frames
License plate frames are decorative frames often used to provide character or pizzaz to your license plate. These may look cute and help to spice things up on your car, but can often cost you a great deal of money in fines and other penalties.
License plate frames are generally legal only if they don’t block the license plate’s information to any extent. Even covering up the smallest fraction of a letter or number can result in the reduced visibility of the plate and therefore a hefty ticket.
North Carolina, for example, has banned license plate frames altogether for any vehicle registered in the state.
Rolling Coal
“Rolling coal” is what drivers of diesel vehicles call it when they modify their fuel intake systems so that their exhaust generates thick, black clouds of smoke when accelerating. These clouds are full of harmful chemicals that can cause serious lung damage if inhaled, significantly reducing the air quality of the area in which they are driven.
For that reason, agencies like the EPA have passed regulations illegalizing the practice and states like Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado, and Maryland have followed its lead, passing their own laws banning the modification itself and imposing hefty fines on anybody who is caught on the road driving a vehicle that belches black smoke.
Special Covers for License Plates
Some people have begun using special devices that cause a screen or wall to mechanically extend, covering their license plates so as to be able to blow through red light cameras, speed cameras, and toll booths without getting caught. For obvious reasons, this surreptitious practice has been outlawed in most jurisdictions.
Extremely Loud Stereo Systems
When your stereo system is loud enough, it can violate local noise ordinances that require people to produce less than a certain amount of noise at certain times of day. However, even if you’re in an area without a noise ordinance, it is possible that an excessively loud stereo system could put you in violation of county or state noise pollution laws.
These laws, however, have shown to be the subject of some controversy in recent years. For example, Florida lawmakers just struck from the record a law that made it illegal for vehicles to produce too much noise at a distance greater than 25 feet. Said law was ruled to be unconstitutional.
A quick note: You are allowed to install aftermarket stereo systems as long as you do not take the volume too loud. A general rule of thumb is that, if it’s rattling your windows, it’s too loud.
Window Tint That’s Too Dark
Tinted windows in states like Florida, Arizona, and California can be a life-saver. They can reduce the level of eye damage taken from looking at reflective surfaces (like other vehicles) when driving on bright, sunny days. However, tint your windows too much and you could find yourself with a hefty ticket.
In many cases, it is illegal to tint the rear or side windows of your vehicle at all. However, each state is different. Alaska, for example, allows tinting in all windows as long as the windshield allows at least 70% light transference and the rear window allows at least 40%.
Front Windshield Tinting
Most vehicles come factory-made with a few inches of significant tinting across the top of the windshield to prevent ambient sunlight from dazzling the driver of the vehicle. However, most states forbid windshield tinting of any kind other than those few inches.
A few exceptions to this rule are Colorado, Rhode Island, and North Dakota. These states allow you to tint the entirety of your windshield as long as there is at least 70% light transference through the glass.
Cold Air Intake
When we say, “cold air intake,” we’re not talking about your air conditioning. Instead, we’re talking about a specific kind of suped up engine that takes in cold air to improve its performance. Of course, as with any performance increasing modification, states like California have taken an issue with cold air intake engines.
In California, you are required to obtain a CARB EO exemption certificate and provide that number to the authorities whenever asked, or else you could be found to be in violation of the law on cold air intake engines.
In fact, any modifications that affect a vehicle’s factory settings emissions levels are entirely forbidden in the Golden State, which takes its commitment to cut pollution and protect the environment very seriously.
